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The Bottleneck
The Bottleneck is a location along the South-East Spur (also known as Abruzzi Spur), the most-used route to the summit of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, in the Karakoram, on the border of Pakistan and China. The Bottleneck is a narrow couloir, which is overhung by seracs from the ice field east of the summit. The couloir is located only below the summit, and climbers have to traverse about exposed to the seracs to pass it. Due to the height of , and the steepness of 50 to 60 degrees, this stretch is the most dangerous part of the route. According to AdventureStats, 13 out of the last 14 fatalities on K2 have occurred at or near the Bottleneck. Despite all the dangers, the Bottleneck is still technically the easiest and the fastest route to the summit. Most climbers choose to use it to minimize time required to spend above (the "death zone"). The standard route, the Abruzzi Spur (SE), as well as the Cesen route (SSE Ridge, which joins SE Ridge), and the Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
K2-above-Bottleneck
K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''kay'' (pronounced ), plural ''kays''. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive. History The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value instead, because their word for hand started with that sound. K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ''ka'' /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ''ce'' (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named ''qu'' and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abruzzi Spur
K2, at above sea level, is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest (at ). It lies in the Karakoram range, partially in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and partially in a China-administered territory of the Kashmir region included in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang. Quote: "K2 is located in the Karakoram Range and lies partly in a Chinese-administered enclave of the Kashmir region within the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China, and partly in the Gilgit-Baltistan portion of Kashmir under the administration of Pakistan." Quote: "Jammu and Kashmir: Territory in northwestern India, subject to a dispute between India and Pakistan. It has borders with Pakistan and China." K2 also became popularly known as the ''Savage Mountain'' after George Bell—a climber on the 1953 American expedition—told reporters, "It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you." Of the five highest mountains in the world, K2 is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karakoram
The Karakoram is a mountain range in Kashmir region spanning the borders of Pakistan, China, and India, with the northwest extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Most of the Karakoram mountain range falls under the jurisdiction of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is controlled by Pakistan. Its highest peak (and List of highest mountains on Earth#List of world's highest peaks, world's second-highest), K2, is located in Gilgit-Baltistan. It begins in the Wakhan Corridor (Afghanistan) in the west, encompasses the majority of Gilgit-Baltistan, and extends into Ladakh (controlled by India) and Aksai Chin (controlled by China). It is the Greater Ranges, second-highest mountain range in the world and part of the complex of ranges including the Pamir Mountains, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas, Himalayan Mountains. The Karakoram has eighteen summits over in height, with four exceeding : K2, the second-highest peak in the world at , Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gashe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's Islam by country#Countries, second-largest Muslim population just behind Indonesia. Pakistan is the List of countries and dependencies by area, 33rd-largest country in the world by area and 2nd largest in South Asia, spanning . It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to India–Pakistan border, the east, Afghanistan to Durand Line, the west, Iran to Iran–Pakistan border, the southwest, and China to China–Pakistan border, the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and fina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Couloir
A ''couloir'' (, "passage" or "corridor") is a narrow gully with a steep gradient in a mountainous terrain.Whittow, John (1984). ''Dictionary of Physical Geography''. London: Penguin, p. 121. . Geology A couloir may be a seam, scar, or fissure, or vertical crevasse in an otherwise solid mountain mass. Though often hemmed in by sheer cliff walls, couloirs may also be less well-defined, and often simply a line of broken talus or scree ascending the mountainside and bordered by trees or other natural features. Couloirs are especially significant in winter months when they may be filled in with snow or ice, and become much more noticeable than in warmer months when most of the snow and ice may recede. These physical features make the use of couloirs popular for both mountaineering and extreme skiing Extreme skiing is performed on long, steep (typically from 45 to 60+ degrees, or grades of 100 to 170 percent) slopes in mountainous terrain. The French coined the term 'Le Ski Ext ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serac
A serac (from Swiss French ''sérac'') is a block or column of glacial ice, often formed by intersecting crevasses on a glacier. Commonly house-sized or larger, they are dangerous to mountaineers, since they may topple with little warning. Even when stabilized by persistent cold weather, they can be an impediment to glacier travel. Seracs are found within an icefall, often in large numbers, or on ice faces on the lower edge of a hanging glacier. Notable examples of the overhanging glacier edge type are well-known obstacles on some of the world's highest mountains, including K2 at "The Bottleneck" and Kanchenjunga on the border of India and Nepal. Significant seracs in the Alps are found on the northeast face of Piz Roseg, the north face of the Dent d'Hérens, and the north face of Lyskamm. Incidents * On a 1969–1970 Japanese expedition to Mount Everest, Kyak Tsering was killed by a falling serac. * In 1990, an earthquake caused a block of serac to fall off Lenin Peak, trigge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Deaths On Eight-thousanders
The eight-thousanders are the 14 mountains that rise more than above sea level; they are all in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges. This is a list of mountaineers who have died on these mountains. Mount Everest Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, has been host to numerous tragedies; over 300 have died on the mountain, with deaths occurring every year since 1978, excluding 2020 when permits were not issued due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The most notable events occurred during the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition, 1970 Everest Disaster, 1974 Everest Disaster, 1996 Everest Disaster, 2014 Mount Everest avalanche, and 2015 Mount Everest avalanches. K2 K2 is the world's second highest mountain. While its summit is at a lower altitude than the summit of Mount Everest, it is considered to be a much harder mountain to climb, due to its steep faces, and extreme weather. As of February 2021, 377 people have completed a summit of the mountain, while 91 hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Zone
In mountaineering, the death zone refers to altitudes above a certain point where the pressure of oxygen is Effects of high altitude on humans, insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span. This point is generally tagged as , less than 356 millibars of atmospheric pressure). The concept was conceived in 1953 by Edouard Wyss-Dunant, a Swiss doctor, who called it the lethal zone. All eight-thousander, 14 peaks above 8000 m in the death zone are located in the Himalaya and Karakoram of Asia. Many deaths in high-altitude mountaineering have been caused by the effects of the death zone, either directly by loss of vital functions or indirectly by wrong decisions made under stress, or physical weakening leading to accidents. An extended stay above without Bottled oxygen (climbing), supplementary oxygen will result in deterioration of bodily functions and death. Physiological background The human body has optimal endurance below elevation. The Atmospheric chemistry, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Wiessner
Fritz Wiessner (February 26, 1900 – July 3, 1988) was a German American pioneer of free climbing. Born in Dresden, Germany, he immigrated to New York City in 1929 and became a U.S. citizen in 1935. In 1939, he made one of the earliest attempts to climb K2, one of the most difficult mountains in the world to climb. Early days Wiessner started climbing with his father in the Austrian Alps before World War I. At the age of 12, he climbed the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany. In the 1920s, he established hard climbing routes in Saxony and the Dolomites that have a present-day difficulty rating of up to 5.11. That was at a time when the hardest free climbing grade in the United States was 5.7. At the age of 25, he made the first ascent of the ''Fleischbank'' in Tyrol, which was proclaimed the hardest rock climb done at that time. Wiessner's physical qualities were atypical of mountaineering. He was tall, slope-shouldered and stocky. He had a wide and friendly gri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pasang Dawa Lama
Pasang Dawa Lama (1912 – September 15, 1982) was a Sherpa Nepalese mountaineer, sirdar. Pasang is considered to be one of the greatest Sherpa mountaineers of the 20th century. In 1939, Pasang participated in the expedition to K2 lead by Fritz Wiessner. The two men came very close to reaching the summit, until the superstitious Pasang asked not to continue climbing as night had fallen. The pair were unable to return for a second attempt. In 1954, along with Herbert Tichy and Sepp Jöchler, Pasang made the first ascent of Cho Oyu. In 1956, Pasang was sirdar for the 1956 Swiss expedition to Everest and Lhotse Lhotse ( ne, ल्होत्से ; , ''lho tse'', ) is the fourth highest mountain in the world at , after Mount Everest, K2, and Kangchenjunga. The main summit is on the border between Tibet Autonomous Region of China and the Khumbu ..., that made the first successful ascent of Lhotse, and the second and third ascents of Everest. References 1912 births ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1939 American Karakoram Expedition
The 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 was the unsuccessful second attempt by American mountaineers to climb the then-unclimbed second-highest mountain in the world, K2, following the 1938 reconnaissance expedition. Fritz Wiessner, the leader of the expedition, and Pasang Dawa Lama got to within of the summit via the Abruzzi Ridge – a difficult and arduous route – with Wiessner doing practically all the lead climbing. Through a series of mishaps, one of the team members, Dudley Wolfe, was left stranded near the top of the mountain after his companions had descended to base camp. Three attempts were made to rescue Wolfe. On the second attempt three Sherpas reached him after he had been alone for a week at over but he refused to try to descend. Two days later the Sherpas again tried to rescue him, but they were never seen again. A final rescue effort was abandoned when all hope for the four climbers had been lost. The deaths and the apparently badly organized nature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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